Zack Owen

Zack Owen

“She’s watching me.”

I invited him into my apartment, unaware of his condition.

“Who?” I ask, but I already know who, or what.

“My mother, she died last week.”

I reach forward and put my hand on his knee. What looks like an act of comforting is really information gathering.

I have managed to keep a safe distance from everyone in the building, but once the dead find me, the living follow. It’s hard to be invisible when everyone sees you.

“I know she’s watching me.” He jerks his head upward to the left, forcing his feathery blond hair to part, exposing his pale blue eyes to the sun, causing him to squint. “Why won’t she leave?”

There are so many answers to this question, all of them disconcerting. I go with ambiguity and misdirection, sidestepping the truth.

“In order for her to leave, she has to be there in the first place.” I offer, but I know he is too turned inward to hear me. He sits there still staring up and squinting, searching for an answer in the light.

I want to disappear into the light with him. Hold his hand, guide him to safety, but this is his journey, and I can’t change the destination. I can temporarily relieve the pressure, but it will return to propel him forward.

After a few minutes of feeling out the layers of energy he is subconsciously projecting, I become familiar with his condition.

His name is Zack, and he is a stationary soul. He is anchored to the energy of a specific location. It is a location that is attached to his spiritual movement forward. He doesn’t know it, but he is still feeding on the energy of this attachment. Like an umbilical cord, supplying him with nutrients his soul cannot live without. He is a premature birth that will only be completed after death. Some are born incomplete, without an attachment. They are in constant need of connection, trying to suck out and hitch a ride on any soul that moves on. Zack is fully attached and stuck.

He is challenged with the loneliness of limited travel accompanied by a thirst for increased connection. In his weakened state, brought on by the death of his mother, he attracts lost souls who try to feed on his attachment. This is what gives him his “watched” feeling. When the flow slows down it signals vulnerability. When the body is compromised the spirit sends out feelers, looking for assistance, and even though he doesn’t know it, that is why he is here, staring out my window.

I have to speak to his brain in code. It has to absorb the information without realizing I am using the information like a trojan horse. Once I get it there it will do it’s work and repair the flow.

Most people with his condition attach themselves to others, hoping the other person will be strong enough to pull them away. But all that does is create tension and eventually destroy the relationship. Their soul needs to drink from the original source and will do anything to keep them in that spot.

For these people, location is everything.

I go into the kitchen and prepare a pot of tea. I follow the normal socializing rituals in order to keep Zack calm and to create a mental pattern for myself that does not alert the spiritual parasites attached to him. Any hint of what I am about to do will permanently damage his connection, and he will become the worst of us. It is deceptively delicate work. I will have to poison his flow enough to force the leeches to detach without permanently contaminating his connection.

I pour the tea; my energy begins to separate, and my mind shifts into position.

There is a language in the air. The space between us is filled with circuits and opportunity. A level of connection that transcends the human bond. It is our original blue print. We are not what we know, we are what we don’t know. The knowing triggers the pattern that keeps us still. Our brain is the keeps us here, even if it shouldn’t. I need to bypass Zacks brain and poison his connection, just a bit. His parasites will detach, and he will find relief.

“Tea?”

Zack doesn’t respond. This is perfect. He is lost inside his head. He will be distracted while I try to manipulate his design.

I use words that puncture the air around us, give me a point of entry. Chants, spells, whatever you want to call them. They play with frequency and energy, they move and shift the crowded space around us, and like a butterfly flapping it’s wings, a storm is created. These words have been crafted over centuries and their origin is unknown. But the ignorance is the work of the mind, true knowledge is in the unknowing.

I can see Zack start to notice my one sided conversation.

I pause.

“Drink it while it’s hot.” I say to him, pointing at his cup.

He looks at his cup and then looks at me. I can’t figure out whether it’s him looking at me or something else. Like a seance, you can’t always control what pushes its way through.

Finally, he reaches for his cup and takes a sip. The distraction of the taste and the movement of his body will massage my message and create a current through him. Once this starts, we are done. Results should be immediate.

Zack puts his cup down and I can feel his pattern shift. He is beginning to settle.

“How do you feel?” I ask.

“Better.”

“Good, sometimes a good cup of tea is all you need.”

Zack looks a me and smiles.

Shit.

It’s not him.

I rarely make mistakes, but when I do the cost is high. Did I mention I hate the living?

I was never in control, he was.

There is an infinite amount of time and space everywhere. The only thing that protects our flow is our belief in it.

Now I have to keep track of him and figure out what to do.

Next time, I won’t answer the door.